If intelligent afterlife does exist, why do the spooks always seem to be sneaking around? Why can't they just reveal themselves and communicate in an understandable and honest manner?
Posts by Cygnus
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53Even if you don't believe in God, do you believe that spirits exist?
by sonnyboy inhow do so many people have similar experiences in "haunted" places if spirits didn't exist?
how do ouija boards work?
i recently purchased one and...i now know why so many people fear them.
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63
Older men dating teenagers/Lolitas
by wanderlustguy inlolitas older men with little girls.
i promised myself only 30 minutes on thisso the timer starts now.
my perspective on this is probably different than most, i am a male, 32 years old.
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Cygnus
Nobody can really quite agree, it's all opinion. In the book A Clockwork Orange, the two girls Alex has a sexual romp with are no older than ten. No way could Kubrick get away with somethng like that on film so he turned them into teenagers, but he had to cut 30 seconds of the 5-x's-sped-up orgy scene to even get his movie a rating..... an X rating at that.
World (state) wide ages of consent for both hetero and homo sexual behavior ---> http://www.ageofconsent.com/ageofconsent.htm
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215
Trinity- True or False
by defd ini know from going door to door that people are generally divided as to who god is.
what are your thoughts?
is jesus almighty god?
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Cygnus
And, LT, don't forget, as Greg Stafford had to keep telling Rob Bowman in their debate last May, JWs fully accept Jesus' divinity and godship. He is THEOS. Now exactly what that means takes on a Clintonian "it depends on what your definition of 'is' is" type of thinking. I can see where the WT/Stafford/Malik are coming from in their theology/christology. I'd just feel like it'd be my bound duty to worship Jesus as Lord and God and accept the Trinity.... if I were a Christian, which thank Yahweh I'm not.
Leo, I like how the sentence structure of Ps. 90 is similar to Jesus' words. I wonder if Furuli dealt with that text in his book. Oh well, I sold my copy on ebay.
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Trinity- True or False
by defd ini know from going door to door that people are generally divided as to who god is.
what are your thoughts?
is jesus almighty god?
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Cygnus
Like I said elsewhere, the gospels are all a hodge-podge of ideas about who and what this one particular messiah-figure purported to be. Tons of ideas existed from 45 CE to c.450 CE. Eventually through much theological debate with lots of different people who had all sorts of theories it was reconciled that He was Man of Man, and truly God of God. And if I were I Christian, I would feel behooved to support that finalized idea.
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Cygnus
In a way I'm nostalgic about my upbringing and heritage as a JW. I often dream at night about the Kingdom Hall, conventions, my father conducting a WT study or the sort. But as there is nothing about JWism that I agree with, I could never (want to) go back.
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Poor medical service and other rant-worthy issues
by kwintestal ini'm really pissed off at our medical services in nova scotia right now.
in janurary i was in a car accident on my way to work.
someone couldn't see me driving down the road over a 5 foot high snowbank and instead of inching out to see if it was clear, he gunned it into the front of my car.
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Cygnus
Well I hear ya, Kwin. I had open heart surgery to replace my mitral valve 3 years ago so now I take 9.5 mg of Coumadin a day (strong anticoagulant/blood thinner). I have to get that checked a couple times a month by means of a simple blood draw.Couple of months ago the lab lady who drew me tied the tourniquet so tight around my left upper arm she severed the radial nerve. By the next day my left hand went dead. I didn't know what was going on so I went to the ER, where they drew blood out of my right arm, and lo and behold THEY tied the tourniquet so tight it severed THAT radial nerve. So now I have been diagnosed by two neurologists with bilateral radial palsy. I have wrist drop and can barely move my fingers. In order to type I have to hover my hands over the keyboard, let them fall, and hope my pointer finger hits the right key (ergo, lots of typos and backspaces, and tired wrists, and frustration galore). My New York State disabilty ain't much and it's gonna run out soon, and I'll probably have to hire a lawyer to sue for social security benefits since I'm so young. My lawyer says he's talked to the neurologist and can't get him to say "malpractice" so I probably won't have a lawsuit. For the first time in my life I feel genuinely scared and helpless.
Edited to add: I'm looking at a 6 month to 2 year recovery time. Basically the nerve has to hopefully regenerate and grow back from my triceps all the way down. I am going to have to figure out a way to not lose my house.
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215
Trinity- True or False
by defd ini know from going door to door that people are generally divided as to who god is.
what are your thoughts?
is jesus almighty god?
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Cygnus
And I'm glad to see my old friend Joe Malik here because he asks some good questions and can get you to think matters like this through for yourself. What he was saying was basically what I was saying about jumping all over the Bible, having Jesus say "ego eimi" as if it were something more meaningful than a simple common Greek phrase (c.f. John 7 and the formerly blind man who also says "ego eimi"), and somehow the Jews paralleled that to Exodus 3:14, not in Hebrew or Aramaic, but in Greek, in particular the LXX. And, of course, Jesus didn't say ego eimi ho on, or, crudely, "I am the Being" as YHWH did, or was translated to have said.
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215
Trinity- True or False
by defd ini know from going door to door that people are generally divided as to who god is.
what are your thoughts?
is jesus almighty god?
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Cygnus
Hellrider,
First of all, I agree with all those who also agree with the WT that "Before Abraham was, I am" is a bad translation. Just on a grammatical basis, it is clumsy, and very poor English. It makes no sense, even a second grader would know enough that speech such as that is unacceptable. The basic meaning of the Greek in Jesus' words at Jn 8:58 are "I was, and I am." Jesus was asserting that he did exist back then "before Abraham" and has continued to exist. That's also a bit clumsy though as well. So I really think that "Before Abraham even existed, I have been!" solves it quite nicely, by satisfying the grammatical linguistics, and getting across the idea that Jesus had an existence prior and continued that existence as he was speaking.
The way I see it, and I'm certainly not insisting that everybody see it my way, is that the texts are a hodge-podge of ideas about a Jesus that evolved out of storytelling and myth. Paul is chiefly responsible for the creation of Christianity but he wasn't much concerned with who Jesus was "before Abraham" or even when he walked the earth. Paul's Jesus was a supernatural resurrected savior. The gospels are inherently so self-contradictory regarding so many stories about Jesus a reasonable person can't accept them as having literally occurred. Even Matthew has Jesus preaching the "Kingdom of Heaven" and Luke renders it the "Kingdom of God." Well, which is it? Which word did Jesus use? Did he say heaven or god?
That's why I've taken up a position that to fanatically insist that one interpretation is infinitestimably better than another is absurd. The texts themselves can't be reconciled and so trying to play Bible hop-scotch or connect-the-dots to what Jesus allegedly said, or what was recorded that he said, to other parts of the so-called scriptures and build a dogma around it is foolishness.
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215
Trinity- True or False
by defd ini know from going door to door that people are generally divided as to who god is.
what are your thoughts?
is jesus almighty god?
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Cygnus
Why do I think the Krauts had something to do with it? I'm sorry, maybe I should read up a little more here http://www.irr.org/English-JW/tetra6.pdf#search='j%20documents%20new%20world%20translation'
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215
Trinity- True or False
by defd ini know from going door to door that people are generally divided as to who god is.
what are your thoughts?
is jesus almighty god?
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Cygnus
LT, that's what I get for neglecting sleep. I meant to say the J documents are German-Greek-Hebrew. I have to quit this staying up for 48 hours straight nonsense.